On This Day in 1916, Private Leslie Quinn was killed in action near Fleurbaix , France.
Leslie Quinn was the eldest of three sons born to Isabella Quinn and her husband. Leslie’s father abandoned his family when the children were still young and Leslie and his brothers and sisters were brought up by their mother.
Little else is known of Leslie’s early life, although he was probably brought up in and around Parramatta, where he was born. After school he became a cellarman in charge of a wine cellar.
Quinn enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 27 August 1915, shortly after his brother Cecil enlisted. The third brother, Thomas, would enlist in November of the same year. Leslie was posted to the 3rd Battalion, Cecil served the 18th, and Thomas the 4th Battalion. In early April 1916 Leslie was sent to France to fight on the Western Front.
Many units of the AIF were given tasks in or near the front line soon after arrival in order to get the men used to the conditions of trench warfare. In late June 1916 the 3rd Battalion was near the French village of Fleurbaix providing working parties to repair damaged front-line trenches.
In the week or so they spent on this task the men of the battalion regularly came under artillery, trench mortar, and even rifle fire, and sustained a number of casualties.
One of those casualties was Private Leslie Quinn. He was most likely a member of a working party that came under mortar fire at 2 am on 29 June, killing four men of the 3rd Battalion. He is now buried in the Rue David Cemetery in France.
Leslie’s death was a great blow to his mother, who had given all of her sons to fight in the war. Within months she would receive word that Cecil had been killed at Pozières. A year later, Thomas was able to be repatriated to Australia “for family reasons”.
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